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The RikWareTimeSpanPicker is complete. Basically it looks like the standard DateTimePicker when it's in time format except it allows the hour section to go past 24 hours. This allows easier editing of short TimeSpans.

The whole thing is built on the UpDownBase class supplied with .NET. On top of that I had to re-implement the partial selection style that the DateTimePicker provides (ie. where you can select just the hour section and move it up and down with the buttons). Unfortunately, using the UpDownBase means no visual styles - I'm working on fixing that.

I signed up for Skype yesterday (username: richard_mason). Seems to work reasonably well even over my 56k link, unless I try to host a conference call or download anything else at the same time. Still, what do you expect...

So... this blog is worth watching isn't it. Anyway, the short version is I haven't posted in a month, but I have managed to visit Melbourne for the first time in over 20 years. Report from Victoria is: Hedge mazes are fun.

On the off chance that somebody out there is still listening, I'm looking for a winforms control to edit timespans. I'm thinking an up-down style control with a time format but which allows the hour section to go past 24 hours. Having found nothing in my brief search, I'm about to go make one of my own.

Also been checking out O/R mappers - settled on LLBLGen Pro which looks pretty good at this stage. If anybody has comments on O/R mappers then I'd love to hear them...

Otherwise... I'm trying to find some time to update RikWik so I can update this site and improve some things. There's a few bugs which I'm putting off fixing until I build an entirely new version of RikWik with a lot of stuff cleaned up. There is lots of activity on RikWik at QUT but unfortunately our versions have forked and I can't just use all the great work Tim is doing. Incidently, that QUT link includes downloads for full source of a slightly older version of RikWik which you can play with yourself. Like most stuff I'm involved in, it's released under a BSD style license so go for it! We'd love feedback or contributions. Unfortunately documentation is still lacking, but hopefully one day soon...

I went to the Bullets game on Saturday night and thanks to my $5 T-Shirt my mate Brad and I got pulled out to sit on "The Couch", receive free drinks, free pizza and watch the game from courtside... poor me!

A new version of the CredentialsDialog is available. This version adds support for windows 2000 and earlier operating systems that don't support the CredUIPromptForCredentials API. Support is provided by a fully managed "pseudo" dialog which looks similar to native one. Extension panels are still supported, and shouldn't require any knowledge of which dialog they are being hosted in. Saving credentials is also supported through the DPAPI (on windows 2000, on earlier systems this is disabled since the DPAPI is unavailable).

I'm pretty happy with the way the whole project degrades gracefully, using whatever APIs are available. I still want to add support for detecting if we have permissions to call native code and falling back to the fully managed version when we don't. Then the project could be used in untrusted environments as well.

Anyway, I'm off to my handball finals this arvo then on to the Bullets first home game. I've been meaning to go to a game for a few years but haven't got around to it. Finally I'm going thanks to a birthday present from my brother-in-law and his girlfriend. At least I'm moving on after the Lions' loss :(

I've finally cleaned up the CredentialsDialog and prepared it for release to the big bad world. Basically it's a wrapper around the CredUIPromptForCredentials windows call which gives you the nice login dialog. Of course this dialog also allows users to save their credentials without any extra effort on your part. Additionally I've added the ability to extend the dialog with extra winforms controls. Currently I provide one extension (shown below) which includes a "create new user" link. You can write extra ones as you wish.

My blog is going to sleep so I thought I'd just update with what I've been up to.

First of all - The Lions have made it to another grand final. We've got our 4th church footy match on the morning of the final then it's back to the church to watch it on the big screen. Hopefully I'll be able to kick 4 big ones like Danny Bradshaw did tonight to down the Cats.

Finally got back into a bit of rock climbing. After 3-4 years of planning we finally went climbing with Rod and Abigail. Rod and I both got up Cornflake Crack and David Mac cleanly, then went back home and ticked them off at The Crag. Then the next day went climbing with Erik & friends and got cleanly up the excellent Halva. All of these climbs are at Kangaroo Point.

Been doing some paper writing for my PhD. Hopefully I'll be headed to AusGrid '05. I've got papers for both RikWik (my C# based super-wiki) and for G2:P2P (my Remoting based cycle-stealing system).

Just got out of Joel Pobar's two TechEd sessions. Joel did an awesome job. He seriously has done some of the best TechEd presentations I've ever seen (and I'm not just saying that as a mate). He presented on CLR 2.0 and CLR internals and they were both excellent. The content was great, the pace was perfect (I find most TechEd stuff to be a bit slow) and he kept everything really clear. Great job Joel!

So, TechEd is well underway. Joel Pobar has turned up after visiting New Zealand TechEd. It's good to catch up. Even though he denies it, Joel has quite the profile in Australia now. Sounds like he's doing some really cool stuff over in Redmond with the CLR team so I'm looking forward to his sessions this arvo. It seems like a long time since Joel was working with me on the G2 project at QUT. Hopefully I'll move on sometime soon as well (after getting my PhD).

Also been meeting a lot of people I know from online - in particular AusDotNet members. In particular Frank Arrigo, Peter Stanski and Nick Weinholt who has written an article on our Imagine Cup entry for Australian Developer next month plus heaps more.

Went to the Geek Dinner pub crawl... well at least the first stop of it... last night. That was fun, though I'm still recovering from the flu I copped over the weekend. Most importantly though, I finally met up with Bernard Oh and the MS Student Ambassadors. Bernard is very active on AusDotNet so our research centre feels like we all know him, even before meeting him. Thanks for the wave Bernard!

Anyway. I'm standing on the MSDN stand showing off the TV Prognosticator so come on round for a demo of a real life Smart Client!

About Us

RikWare is a software development company based in Brisbane, Australia. Led by director, Richard Mason, RikWare focusses on solving challenging business problems promptly and effectively.

RikWare is also the owner of Aussie Bushwalking, a free, wiki-like collaboration site for bushwalkers and the creator of RikMigrations, a migration framework for .NET.

Aussie Bushwalking

Want to discover some new bushwalking ideas? Share a few of your own? Aussie Bushwalking is like Wikipedia... but for bushwalkers. Head on over. Anybody can see the walks and it's free to sign up and share your own.

RikMigrations

RikMigrations is a database migration library for .NET based on the migrations facility provided by Ruby on Rails. It allows simple upgrading and downgrading of databases using .NET code (such as VB or C#) either from the command line or built into your application. Unlike many other migration frameworks, RikMigrations is a stand-alone library which does not rely on a large surrounding framework.